Sunday, November 14, 2010

A Full Sheet - Painted and Signed

I feel good. With inspiration from my friend Annie Salness, I challenged myself to do a full sheet watercolor. I usually work smaller for space and economic reasons (cost of framing, fear of failure, etc), but thought if Annie can fight back from a stroke, I can surely tackle a large white sheet of paper.

I have an inventory of inspiring photographs from earlier trips to Italy and the Mediterranean - great subject matter for a painting. This latest piece is based on a place that brought me to tears. After touring La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, I sat on a bench and cried - me, little old Donna McCormick Sanson who comes from very humble beginnings, was sitting in this beautiful foreign city outside a splendid work of art by Antonio Gaudi, able to reach out and touch it, to stroll under its vaulted ceilings, to stand in the bans of colored sunlight streaming through its fractured stain glass windows, to watch artisans continue the daily work of its ongoing construction and know that I was there when parts of it were still open to the sky - I was overwhelmed.

The detail in this image is meant to give you a little peek, a little preview of my January showcase at Amato's.